“I swear to God, if you existed I’d divorce you!”

So said Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton in Mike Nichols’s screen version of Edward Albee’s masterpiece of a mangled marriage, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe.”

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Sam Mendes’s film work is a distinct – not an acquired – taste. You either love it or loath it. (Try being middle-of-the-road on “American Beauty” or “Road to Perdition,” or even “Jarhead.” It doesn’t play.)

Mendes is not giving us a break with his latest, “Revolutionary Road,” starring his wife, the brilliant Kate Winslet, and Kate’s former “Titanic” co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio. (Don’t worry – they immerse themselves so completely in their current roles that the memory of their star-making shipboard romance doesn’t even register. This time out the boat is their marriage, the iceberg is reality.)

“Revolutionary Road” is based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates. I don’t know the book, but the movie is … unrelenting, intense, downbeat. Not only is it curious fare for a holiday-time release, it is a movie that should come with a warning sticker: “Caution! Relationships at Risk. Proceed With Care!” The film is set in 1950s suburbia and it is all about lack of choice, crushed hope, waking up from infatuation and false idealization. We’ve already seen quite a number of films like this. Winslet herself traveled a similar road in “Little Children” – contemporary suburban angst. (And didn’t Mendes put a capper on neurotic dissatisfaction with his equally depressing “American Beauty”?)

So at first glance, and even second, one might ask, “Why this movie, this subject, now in 2008?” Is there anything more to say, especially in a period piece, especially as so many of the issues are dealt with in hypnotically entertaining fashion via TV’s “Mad Men” and its 1950s world of endless cigarettes, five-martini lunches and stifled women? (Drinks and cigs get endless play in “RR” too.)

I’d have to ask Mr. Mendes for the answer to “why?” But we can assess what this film does provide: a) a pyrotechnic display of his wife’s abilities; b) a pyrotechnic  display of Mr. DiCaprio’s abilities. 

There’s a lot of “Acting” going on, including a truly sensational turn from Michael Shannon as a deranged acquaintance who pops in and out of Kate and Leo’s home as a kind of one-person Greek chorus; or perhaps a male version of Cassandra always seeing the gloomy future, always to naught?

Kathy Bates as the fluttery real-estate broker, Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour as Kate and Leo’s neighbors, are also splendid. So if you are looking for a movie that clobbers you with actors at their best, “Revolutionary Road” delivers. (Some may prefer Miss Winslet’s equally fine but less showy performance in “The Reader” but Kate’s A-to-Z gamut in “RR” is the kind of stuff Academy members love.)

The “hook” is Winslet’s character. She is so desperate, disappointed, filled alternately with hopeless hope turned to rage, that you can’t help being pulled in. At times, during the volcanic arguments between the miserable married couple, (always, curiously, the children are absent) the movie teeters dangerously close to a parody of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” or, even more surreal, “The War of the Roses.” (In Winslet’s final, terrible confrontation with Leo, she utters, almost word-for-word, Kathleen Turner’s lines when Turner finally tells Michael Douglas she wants out.) Winslet excels at playing conflicted characters; women who could easily be seen as unsympathetic bitches in less skilled hands. (Or crazy, as DiCaprio insists she is, as her “childish” plans for happiness unravel.)

The commitment of the actors is so intense that it transcends manipulation and predictability – I can’t say there was one real surprise. Perhaps there wasn’t supposed to be. I’m sure the 16th century audience who saw “Hamlet” back in the day didn’t expect a big musical number to wrap it up. Some material just screams, “Fie, fie, it’s all bad news!”

DiCaprio matches Winslet mood for mood, rage for rage. Indeed, his explosions are even more terrifyingly realistic than Kate’s. Leo was never a convincing heartthrob, always a genuine actor; a character actor, really. He certainly is allowing himself to mature physically onscreen. There’s no vanity in how he presents himself.